Mayday

by Nelson DeMille

  Hennings spoke into the microphone and relayed the message. He added, “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. We’re with you, and we’re praying for you. Out.” Hennings released the microphone button so that Matos could continue to transmit. Tears came to his eyes, and he turned away and stared out toward the porthole.

  Matos’s voice broke the silence in the room. “I am down to ten thousand feet. Preparing to eject.” His voice had become matter-of-fact, as though he were reporting on someone else’s problem. “Eight thousand feet.”

  Hennings took note of the calmness in his voice. He knew it was important for a pilot, as for a seaman, to do this well, to go down with dignity.

  “Still extremely turbulent …” The sound of Matos’s breathing came through loudly on the speaker and filled the electronics room. “This is my last transmission. I am leaving the aircraft now.” The speaker gave a loud pop as the canopy blew off, followed by an earpiercing rushing sound as the transmitter picked up the three hundred-mile-an-hour wind that filled the cockpit. Then, a split second later, they heard the loud explosion of the ejecting charge as Peter Matos’s flight chair was blown clear of the F-18.

  The continuous, unnerving roar of the abandoned fighter was broadcast into Room E-334. Hennings thought for a moment that he could hear the crashing sea, then an odd sound, like a muffled slap vibrated through the speaker, followed by silence.

  Sloan reached out and shut off the radio. He spoke softly into the interphone. “The aircraft is down. The pilot has ejected. Home in on his raft transmitter when he lands. Yes. Thank you.” He hung up. Sloan put his hand on the digital clock and erased the remaining minutes of fuel time that Matos never had. The digits 00:00 seemed appropriate. He sat down. “We can console ourselves, Admiral, with the fact that one F-18 is a small price to pay for the continuation of the Phoenix program. The program, like its namesake, will rise from its own ashes and fly again.”

  “Your attempt at metaphor is grotesque, ill-timed, and inappropriate, Commander. What I’m concerned about now is Flight Lieutenant Matos.”

  “Yes, of course. We all are. Lieutenant Matos is trained in sea survival. His life raft will keep him afloat and his flight suit will keep him dry. And at these latitudes, the water is not that cold.” Sloan rocked back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. He pictured Peter Matos dropping quickly into the sea, his parachute ripped apart by the winds. Then another picture flashed through his mind: Peter Matos landing softly, inflating his raft, clinging to it. How long could he live in the sea? No one was looking for him. It might take days for him to die. Then again, he might not die. There had always been that possibility. He suddenly saw Matos being transferred from a rescue craft to theNimitz —stepping aboard, his flight suit covered for some reason with seaweed, walking across the wide flight deck before him.No . Even without the storm, he had no chance if no one was looking for him in the right place.

  The sound of Hennings’s voice penetrated Sloan’s thoughts. He opened his eyes and looked up at the Admiral. Hennings was speaking into the blue interphone.

  “Hello? Hello?” He pushed repeatedly on the headset buttons. “Hello? Air-sea rescue?” Hennings looked down at Sloan, then down at the series of colored phones in their cradles. He reached over and slid the clipboard away from the switches, saw that they were off, then looked back at Sloan.

  Sloan sat silently and met the old man’s eyes. Finally, he said, “Sorry, Admiral. It was the only way out for us.”

  Hennings let the phone fall from his hand and heard it hit the floor. His voice was barely above a whisper. “You … you son-of-a-bitch. You murdering son-of-a-bitch … How in the name of God … ?” Hennings’s senses reeled, and he had to make an effort to stand steady. His eyes tried to focus on Sloan, but he saw sitting in front of him not Sloan himself, but Sloan’s true essence. “Whoare you?What are you?”

  “We, Admiral.We .”

  The illusion passed, and Hennings regained control of himself. “Matos was … he trusted you … he was one of your men. …”

  “I see you’re not giving as much thought to the hundreds of people we sent down on the Straton. Don’t civilians count?”

  Hennings put his hands on the console and leaned over, close to Sloan. “You know the expression: three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.” He looked Sloan in the eye. “Me next?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  Hennings straightened up. “Call air-sea rescue right now.” He reached for the phone switches.

  Sloan grabbed his arm and held it tight. “Don’t be a fool. We’ve already consigned a planeload of civilians to their deaths. If we start a search for one man who can hang us, we may as well do it for all of them.” He tightened his grip on the Admiral’s arm. “And it would be a useless exercise. No one can survive that sea.” He released Hennings’s arm and spoke in a calmer tone. “Admiral, it’s not even jail I mind very much. It’s the indignity of the proceedings. We’ll be treated as the most vile things that ever lived. Our names will be spit out in the officers’ clubs and ward rooms for generations. That’s no way to end a career. If you remain silent, no one will ever know. Nothing is gained by confessing. Nothing. The dead are dead. The Navy and the nation are intact.” He changed the tone of his voice and spoke as though he were giving an official report. “Flight Lieutenant Peter Matos was killed when the rocket engine of his Phoenix missile exploded while strapped to his aircraft. He will receive full military honors and his family will cherish his memory, and they will receive his insurance and all standard benefits due an officer’s family. His name will not be besmirched in any way.” Sloan paused for a long time. “Admiral?”

  Hennings nodded.

  Sloan looked up at the wall clock. Three-ten. “Isn’t your flight off the carrier scheduled for 1600 hours?”

  “Yes,” Hennings answered absently.

  “Then I suggest you gather your gear, Admiral. You’ve only got fifty minutes, and I expect you’ll first want to pay your respects to Captain Diehl.”

  Hennings glared at Sloan.

  “Also,” Sloan added, waving his hand at the report sheets that still lay on the radio console, “I expect your report to the Joint Chiefs will stress that this mishap was in no way my fault.”

  Without answering, Randolf Hennings turned and walked out of Room E-334.

  * * *

  John Berry felt the familiar pilot’s control pressures in his hands and realized that this was the first time he had attempted to hand-fly the giant Straton. The warning horn sounded weak and the lights became dimmer as the electrical energy was being drained away from the dying airliner. The cockpit became quieter as they dropped beneath the worst part of the storm. From the lounge, Berry could hear the moans of the injured. He released one hand from the wheel and turned on the windshield wipers. Through the rain and clouds, he thought he could see glimpses of the ocean. His heart pounded quickly. He forced himself to look down at the altimeter. “Four thousand feet,” he said aloud. They were dropping at the rate of about forty feet a second. “Less than two minutes to impact. Hold on. Sharon … the life vests …”

  “Yes. In the orange pouch against the rear wall.”

  Berry turned and looked at the orange pouch hanging on the wall, then saw the small emergency exit near the right rear of the cockpit. “When we hit, you get the vests. I’ll open the door. Linda, stay in your seat until we come for you.”

  Crandall grabbed his arm. “John … John, I’m scared.”

  “Stay calm. For God’s sake, stay calm.” Berry held the controls tightly. He knew he should be thinking about how to bring the aircraft in, and what to do if they survived the crash. But he couldn’t get his mind off the problem of the dead engines.The fuel was shut off. But the fuel is now on again. What else … ?

  A bolt of lightning flashed close outside his left window and the cockpit was illuminated with an orange glow, followed by the crackling sound of unharnessed electricity. Berry sat up quickly. Suddenly, all the complexit
ies of the overhead instrument panel were swept away. “Oh, for God’s sake!” He saw in a moment of unbridled clarity his old Buick, rolling down a hill in Dayton, Ohio, engine off, and he saw his hand turn the ignition switch, and heard again the sound of the Buick’s engine firing into life. “Sharon! The ignitors! The ignitors! Listen. Listen to me. Get up. Get up!” He looked down at the altimeter. Two thousand feet.

  As she unbuckled her belt and slid from her chair, the Straton broke through the bottom of the thunderstorm, and Berry could see the surface of the ocean clearly now. The sky was relatively calm, and the aircraft flew without much turbulence. But even from this altitude he could see the towering white foam of the swelling waves. He knew that even if they could get out of the aircraft, they wouldn’t survive that sea.

  Sharon Crandall was holding his arm and looking at him. Berry realized in an instant that she had perfect trust and confidence in him; as a flight attendant, she must have known that to ditch without a restraining belt meant almost certain death.

  Berry spoke clearly and firmly. “I can’t look away from the flight instruments. … On the overhead panel there are four switches marked ‘engine ignitors.’ Hurry.”

  She knelt down behind the pedestal between the pilot’s chairs and looked up. Her eyes swept the instruments and switches above her. “Where? Where? John …”

  Berry tried to reconstruct the panel in his mind while he kept his eyes glued to the flight instruments. He finally glanced up for a brief instant, for as long as he could dare. “Lower left! Lower left! Four switches. Yellow lights above them. Yellow! Yellow! Turn them on. On!”

  Crandall spotted them and passed her hand over all four switches at once, pushing them into the on position. “On! On!”

  Berry looked down at the altimeter. Nine hundred feet. The rate of descent had slowed slightly, but they had lost some airspeed. They had less than half a minute before the Straton would hit the water. He called out to Sharon, “Back in the seat. Strap in.” He stared at the center panel and watched to see if the Straton’s engine instruments would come to life. He tried to think if there was anything else he had to do to fire up the engines, but couldn’t think of anything. He focused intently on the four temperature gauges. Slowly, the needles began to rise. “Ignition! Ignition! We have power!” But he knew that the process of accelerating the jet engines and producing enough thrust for lift would take time, perhaps more time than they had left.

  He glanced at the altimeter. Two hundred and fifty feet. The airliner’s speed had bled off to 210 knots and the descent was slower, but he sensed he was very close to a stall. As soon as that thought entered his mind, the stall warning alarm began to sound—a synthetic voice repeating the wordAIRSPEED ,AIRSPEED ,AIRSPEED . Berry knew that he should push forward on the wheel, lower the nose, and pick up airspeed to avert the stall, but he had no altitude left for that. Reluctantly, he pulled slightly back on the wheel and felt the nose rise. The Straton began to vibrate, the tremors shaking the air-frame so violently that it became nearly impossible to read the instruments. The Straton was engaged in a test of strength between gravity and the thrust of its accelerating engines. As he glanced at his altimeter, he saw that gravity was winning. One hundred feet.

  He looked down out of the side window. The hundred feet that was showing on the altimeter seemed less than that in reality. The swelling sea that sped by beneath him seemed to rise up to the wings of the airliner. He glanced out the front windshield. Huge, towering waves rose and broke only a short distance below him. If even one of those waves reached up and touched the Straton, the aircraft would lose enough speed to make a crash a certainty.

  Berry scanned his instruments. Engine power was up, airspeed was good, but altitude was still dropping. Berry nudged the control column, trying to keep the nose up. He was walking a shaky tightrope, and one slip would put them into the violent sea at nearly 200 knots.

  The synthetic voice announcingAIRSPEED continued, and so did the prestall vibrations. Berry worked the flight controls judiciously, trying to trade their few ounces of available energy for a few inches of extra altitude.

  The altimeter read zero, though he guessed the airplane was still about twenty feet above the water. It was becoming obvious that the Straton was not going to make it, given the rate of increasing thrust against the rate of descent. Involuntarily, the muscles of his buttocks tightened and he rose imperceptibly from his seat. “Come on, you pig—climb! Climb, you bastard!” He turned to Crandall and shouted above the noise. “Locate the afterburners! Afterburners!”

  She scanned the overhead panel again, near where the ignitor switches had been. She raised her arm and gave Berry a thumbs-up.

  “Hit the switches!” He paused for a split second and said, “Then get into position to ditch.”

  Crandall hit the four switches.

  Berry heard and felt a two-phased thud as the after-burners kicked in. He had no idea what would happen next.

  Crandall called to Linda. “Put your head down! Like this.” Crandall hunched over into a crash position, as well as she could with the copilot’s wheel in front of her. Before she put her head down, she glanced up to see if Linda had done the same.

  Berry felt the slight sensation of being pressed against his seat. The Straton was accelerating as fuel was injected directly into the jet exhausts and ignited to give extra thrust to the engines. The prestall airframe buffeting lessened, and he pulled farther back on the control wheel. The nose came up, and the ocean seemed to sink beneath his windshield. The stall alarm voice sounded one more time, then stopped. The altimeter showed 100 feet and climbing. “We’re climbing! We’re climbing! We’re lifting!”

  Sharon Crandall picked her head up. She felt the increased Gs against her body as the aircraft rose. “Oh, God. Dear God.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Berry held the control column with his left hand, reached his right hand out, and spread his fingers over the four engine throttles. For the first time since he had climbed into the flight chair, he was in control.

  He called out to Sharon Crandall. “Afterburners—off.”

  She reached up and shut them down.

  The Straton decelerated slightly and Berry worked the four throttles, feeling the aircraft accelerate again. He watched the engine temperature and pressure gauges rise and the altimeter needle move upward. Five hundred feet, six hundred. Berry sat back. The unknown terrors of flying the airliner, like most unknown terrors, had been exaggerated.

  No one spoke. All the lights in the cockpit came back on, and most of the warning lights extinguished. Outside, the violent storm raged above them, but at their lower altitude it produced no more than rain and manageable winds. John Berry cleared his throat. “We’re heading home. Sharon, Linda, are you both all right?”

  The girl answered in a weak voice. “I’m not feeling good.”

  Crandall released her seat belt, stood, and stepped over the girl. She noticed that her own legs were wobbling. She took the girl’s face in her hands. “Just a little airsick, honey. You’ll be all right in a minute. Take a lot of deep breaths. There.”

  Berry recognized the automatic words of the veteran flight attendant, but the tone was sincere.

  Crandall leaned over and gave Berry a light kiss on the cheek, then slid back into the copilot’s chair without a word.

  Berry concentrated on the instruments. He let the Straton come up to 900 feet, then leveled out before they rose into the bottom of the thunderstorm.

  He listened for sounds from the lounge, but heard nothing that penetrated the noise of the rain, the hum of electronics, or the droning of the jet engines.

  He shut off the windshield wipers, experimented with the flight control for a few minutes, then reached out and reengaged the autopilot. The amber light went off, and he released the wheel and the throttles and took his feet off the pedals. He flexed his hands and stretched his arms, then turned to Sharon. “That was about as close as it comes. You were very cool.”

&nb
sp; “Was I? I don’t remember. I think I remember screaming.” She looked closely at him. “John … what happened? You didn’t do something … no … I read the message.”

  “Neither you nor I did anything wrong … except to listen to them.”

  “What … ?”

  The alerting bell rang.

  They looked at each other, then stared down at the data-link screen.TO FLIGHT 52: DO YOU READ? ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

  Berry motioned toward the console. “Those bastards. Those sons-of-bitches.”

  Crandall looked at him, then back at the message. She had not had time to think clearly about what had happened, and had not yet come to terms with what she’d thought about, but her half-formed conclusions suddenly crystallized. “John … howcould they … ? I mean, how could … why … ?”

  “God, I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been. Hawaii. That should have been my tip-off. Shift the center of gravity. Fuel gauges. Those goddamned lying sons-of-bitches.”

  Crandall was still trying to understand all that had happened. “That was partly my fault. I talked you into—”

  “No. I trusted them too. But I shouldn’t have. I should have known. Idid know, goddamn it.”

  “Butwhy? Why, in the name of God, would they do that?”

  “They don’t want”—Berry jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“themback.”

  Crandall nodded. She’d thought of that for some time, but never pursued the thought to its natural conclusion. “What are we going to do? What are we going to answer them?”

  “Answer?I’m not going to answer anything.”

  “No, John. Answer them. Tell them we know what they tried to do.”

  Berry considered, then shook his head. “Someone who is trying to kill us has control of the situation down there. Someone in that tight little room off the Dispatch Office. Talking to the man—or men—in that room is like shouting to the man who just pushed you into the water that you’re drowning. I’m not going to tip them off that we’re still alive. That’s our secret, and we’ll make the most of it.”